Under-par Pulborough bag bonus-point win against Sheppey

A bonus-point victory kept Pulborough second in London 3 South East and captain Simon Burfiend praised his side for winning ugly.

Despite the home side being forced into a number of changes to the team they managed to secure a 28-14 victory over Sheppey.

Burfiend admitted it was promising to see his side win when not at their best and said: “It was a frustrating game for us this weekend, both as a player and I would imagine as a spectator.

“Sheppey did a good job of slowing the game down using their significantly larger pack well at scrum time.

“This combined with the referee decisions didn’t allow much flow or continuity into the game. Saying this, it is always a show of our team’s strength when we are; bringing in new players, missing significant senior players, don’t play well and still come away with a bonus-point win.”

Lewis Morton made his debut and put in a fine display alongside man of the match Gareth Nichols, who also recently joined the club.

Within a few minutes, Sheppey found a gap in the midfield and the powerful 13 made his way in under the sticks for a converted try.

The visitors’ fly-half then missed a fairly-simple penalty from in front of the posts, before Brad Game went charging in from within his own half to score in the corner, with Burfiend adding the conversion.

’Borough then had scrum half Ollie Paige sin-binned over a harsh call of not being ten metres back from the halfway line.

After the break, Will Truscott continued his scoring form. He was offloaded to by Paige and beat the final man to barrel over left of the posts, with Burfiend again successfully converting.

Byron Clark also received a yellow card for a no-armed tackle, but Borough did not slow up. Charlie Denman went careering for the line. With an impressive display of determination he managed to get the ball down and Burfiend’s extras took the score to 21-7.

Game then showed some trademark pace and finishing prowess after some well-worked forward passes and Burfiend kept us his 100 per cent record from his boot.

Sheppey did have the final say with another impressive display of scrummaging driving the Borough pack over its own line.